One of those to pass the Vicksburg and Warrenton, Missouri batteries in April 1863, Carondelet took part on April 29 in the five and one-half hour engagement with the batteries at Grand Gulf. She remained on duty off Vicksburg, hurling fire at the city in its long siege from May to July. Without her and her sisters and other naval forces, the great operations on the rivers would not have been possible and the United States victory might not have been won.

Post-war decommissioning and sale

Subsequent career and sinking

In 1873, shortly before she was to be scrapped, a flood swept the Carondelet from her moorings in Gallipolis, Ohio. She then drifted approximately 130 miles down the Ohio River, where she grounded near Manchester, Ohio. Her ultimate fate remained unknown until a May 1982 search operation by the National Underwater and Marine Agency pinpointed the location of the wreckage, two days after a dredge passed directly over the wreckage, demolishing most of the wrecked vessel.